Science and the Criminal

by C. Ainsworth Mitchell

As has been mentioned, one of the points brought as evidence against the prisoner was that a bottle of glycerine had been found in the lavatory, and that this contained arsenic. There was no evidence that the prisoner had ever had this bottle in her hand, and, apart from that, arsenic is a very usual impurity in ordinary commercial glycerine.

Having regard to the conflict of the scientific testimony, and to the evidence of Mr. Maybrick having acquired the habit of taking arsenic while resident in America, it was generally expected that the prisoner would be acquitted. The judge, however, evidently believing her guilty, summed up strongly against her, and put the point to be decided in the following form: The prosecution said that arsenic was the producing cause of the gastro-enteritis which was the immediate cause of death; arsenic was found in the body, and strong proof was given that arsenic was administered. The terrible question was: By whose hand was it administered? The deceased might have taken it himself, and if there was any reasonable doubt upon that point it was the duty of the jury to acquit the prisoner; but if a crime was committed, no other person but the prisoner was suggested as having committed it.

The jury were so influenced by the remarks of the judge that, after a retirement of a little over thirty minutes, they found the prisoner “Guilty.”

The feeling was very widely expressed that the prosecution had failed to establish beyond all reasonable doubt that the deceased had died from arsenic, and that arsenic had been given to him by the prisoner, and that, therefore, she was entitled to the “benefit of the doubt,” which the judge’s directions to the jury had not allowed to her.

It may be mentioned here that the judge himself, in the second edition of his Criminal Laws of England, published in 1890, states that out of 979 cases tried before him up to September, 1889, “the case of Mrs. Maybrick was the only case in which there could be any doubt about the facts.”

In consequence of this feeling that a terrible mistake might have been made, memorials for the respite of Mrs. Maybrick were signed by the physicians of Liverpool, by members of Bars of Liverpool and London, and by the citizens of Liverpool, in all of which stress was laid upon the conflict of medical testimony. Memorials were also sent in from other parts of the country, and in all 5,000 petitions, containing upwards of half a million signatures, were received by the Home Secretary.

The feeling was too strong to be ignored, and the Home Secretary, therefore, announced that he had advised the commutation of the death penalty to one of penal servitude for life, on the ground that: “Inasmuch as, although the evidence leads to the conclusion that the prisoner administered and attempted to administer arsenic to her husband with intent to murder him, yet it does not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his death was in fact caused by the administration of arsenic.”

Persistent efforts were made to obtain the liberation of the prisoner, and Lord Russell of Killowen, who had defended her at the trial, and whose belief in her innocence had never wavered, brought the matter under the notice of each succeeding Home Secretary, but always without avail. It was not until after the lapse of fifteen years that she was liberated at the ordinary termination of a sentence shortened by the good behaviour of the prisoner.

The course followed by the Home Secretary (Matthews) and endorsed by his successors is impossible to defend from a logical point of view.

If the prisoner was guilty of murder, there was no justification for yielding to the popular demand. If, on the other hand, there was “a reasonable doubt” as to whether the man died from the effects of arsenic, she ought to have been set at liberty. But to commute the sentence for the reason given was to convict the prisoner of attempted murder, a charge upon which she had never been tried, and for which, if found guilty, she would not have received penal servitude for life.